As we apply for the third cycle of our former MBRS AI program we welcome the conversion of the former AI S06 to an R25. This increased flexibility will allow us to augment our successful mentor - protege concept to include "value added" components to increase the success of our efforts to rectify the underrepresentation of minorities in biomedical research. Therefore we have increased our pool of research mentors to 26 and expanded the number of department participants to include Nursing, Graduate School of Public Health, and Communicative Disorders. We will support a total of 20 MBRS research participants: 12 undergraduates, 4 masters students, 2 pre doctoral students, and 2 post doctoral fellows. In summary we have taken our successful mentor - protege concept in an AI program and added several components to increase the probability that our research participants will become successful biomedical researchers. Examples of our value added components are: Utilization of the 14 existing programs in the USP office to affect a pipeline approach to recruit and retain talented minority biomedical researchers. To require that the students prepare a portfolio to provide evidence of research experience and competency to increase the probability of entry into a graduate program. Students will prepare a web page that will allow them to be linked via the computer to potential graduate programs. Post doctoral students and pre doctoral students will gain not only a quality research experience but also the opportunity to learn how to be a competent teacher and how to apply for research funding. In addition, we have added a strong evaluation component to assure that both quantitative and qualitative documentation will be available. Such information will allow for continued self-evaluation of the program (i.e., what works, what doesn't work) and also document success within the program.